FORWARD OSMOSIS

Forward Osmosis (FO) is a novel membrane-based water treatment process in which semi-permeable membrane separated by different salinity mediums generates water flux across membrane and thereby recovering water from various mediums. Due to numerous process and operational advantages over conventional technologies, FO can be a promising alternative to various applications such as sea water desalination, zero liquid discharge and water recycle from complex feed streams.

As FO is mainly using osmotic pressure- generated by creating concentration gradient across membrane- to extract clean and fresh water from high salinity feed stream, there is no need to apply additional hydraulic pressure on a feed side (like RO).

The feed stream water recovery is accomplished using draw solution in FO process which eventually gives concentrated feed against diluted draw solution. The reconcentration of draw solution is an essential step for the continuity of integrated operation. Depending on draw solution TDS various technological options are considered to regenerate draw solution such as RO, NF or membrane distillation (MD).